Comprehensible Input and Family (a special Thanksgiving post)

Is It Harder to Learn a Language from a Relative?

It is Thanksgiving week here in the US and in honor of family I am taking a break from writing about Chinese and second language learning to write about Spanish! Over the years, I have had many students with Chinese-speaking family members, usually a spouse, parent or grandparent. Often we joke about how the student should just learn for free at home, but the chuckles we share are usually punctuated with the same refrain: “my parent/spouse/grandparent just can’t teach me or I can’t learn from him/her.” We joke that it should be as simple as being in the same household as someone who speaks another language, but it really is just a joke because language learning is much more complex than that.

A Struggle With Spanish

I have my own jokes too, about how I could learn Chinese while living in China but I can’t seem to learn Spanish living under the same roof as my Mexican husband. I never quite believed that my brain was uniquely incapable of learning Spanish, or that my ordinarily very competent husband could not teach basic Spanish. But as our lives chugged on, I learned a few phrases but never felt like I made any progress in speaking more Spanish at home. Then something happened, and by this I mean that my nephew Luka came to stay with us for the summer from Mexico. Towards the end of the visit, I noticed myself speaking and understanding more Spanish. Either Luka had brought the magical fairy dust from Mexico that helps people learn Spanish or something else afoot. Turns out, second language acquisition theory tells us exactly what was going on.

Getting Comprehensible Input in Spanish

When Luka was living with us, I got loads more comprehensible input in Spanish. When it is just me and my husband at home, we talk about the things that married people tend to talk about, city council elections, renovating the kitchen, problems at work (only my husband has those ;)). These topics are really difficult to tackle in Spanish for someone with only a novice level of the language. They are abstract, use specialized vocabulary, and need a great deal of nuance. In Spanish, they are very much beyond frustration level for me.

With Luka in our house, however, the Spanish input I received changed. Before, it was either the same two responses to “tienes hambre?” (are you hungry) or a phrase that was too far beyond my level for me to understand anything. My husband talked to Luka about what he wanted for breakfast, chores he needed to do, the movies we watched as a family. All of these topics were very concrete, repetitive. There are only so many things a boy will eat for lunch. All of these things were comprehensible for me. Additionally, with two people speaking Spanish in front of me, I got twice the amount of input in Spanish than I received before. Really it was more like ten times the amount of Spanish because before. In the past, I only heard more than basic responses when my husband was on the phone.

My nephew Luka and I at my wedding

In Language, More is More

It has been several months since Luka left and my Spanish is coming along. This is the cool thing about language, more creates more. This was the shot in the arm I needed, hearing everyday conversation between two people. With this, I was able to build more of the implicit structure of the language in my head. Because I can understand more, I can say more. Since I can say more, my husband responds more (in Spanish). The other day we had a…. lively debate… about who had more shoes, all in Spanish! It was not the scintillating discussion that great relationships are made of, but it was an improvement over ““tienes hambre?”